1. Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate in general to a wireless communication technology and more specifically to WI-FI Direct-based message communication method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving messages, independently of any network, without privacy invasion issues.
2. Related Art
Recently, the WI-FI Alliance group, which is the international industry standard organization of WI-FI technology, finalized a new WI-FI standard referred to as WI-FI Direct and has performed certification of a variety of WI-FI Direct-based devices.
The WI-FI Direct standard complements a peer-to-peer (P2P) function that is a technical drawback in the existing WI-FI technology and thus allows a P2P connection between machines each having a WI-FI chip installed therein, thereby enabling free machine-to-machine communication without any separate AP.
In the related art, the connection between multiple peers can be implemented with an ad-hoc technology using WI-FI technology. However, if the peers use different types of devices or operating systems, the connection between the peers is actually impossible to implement.
Also, the peers do not have a power management standard supported therebetween to maintain a maximum power consumption function even in a terminal standby time, resulting in significant reduction in a terminal operating time.
To solve these problems, the WI-FI Alliance has established WI-FI Direct technology. Strictly speaking, WI-FI Direct is a name of WI-FI P2P technology established by the WI-FI Alliance. Accordingly, in a technical discussion, the term “WI-FI P2P” is more suitable than the term “WI-FI Direct”. However, since the term “WI-FI Direct” has been more widely used, WI-FI P2P technology is collectively referred to as WI-FI Direct throughout this specification.
WI-FI Direct technology is expected to be widely used in a variety of IT equipment such as a printer and a vehicle's navigation terminal as well as a variety of mobile terminal devices such as a smartphone, a digital camera, etc.
Meanwhile, location-based advertising message transmission technology may be largely classified into a push-type service and a pull-type service. If a user has a terminal that uses a mobile communication network such as CDMA and HSPA+ and the terminal has a GPS receiver embedded therein, a service vendor can find out the location of the user. Thus, the service vendor can directly transmit point of interest (POI) information about the user's location to a user terminal using an SMS or MMS service. In this case, SMS or MMS service contents containing advertisement, discount information, etc. may be downloaded to the user terminal. This type of service is referred to as the push-type service. Alternatively, an advertisement message may be popped up in a lower end or certain portion of a screen when the user performs an Internet page, a game, or an application. This type of service is referred to as the pull-type service.
A variety of advertisement messages can be downloaded to the user terminal in the above-classified push-type service and pull-type service. A technical feature in common between the push-type service and pull-type service is that an advertisement service is provided to the user terminal after connecting to a wide area network (such as CDMA or HSPA+) or WI-FI network and experiencing a user authentication step and a device combination step between communicating objects.
A technology of connecting to a wide area network or WI-FI network and receiving an advertisement message is applied using a wireless network infrastructure established by large telecommunication companies. Thus, the user receives a push-type service that has been already approved or an arbitrarily-provided pull-type service without separate change in terminal settings even when there is a handoff between the wide area network and the WI-FI network. That is, the service user unconsciously exposes his/her location information and history information to a telecommunication company or portal, and thus to the advertisement message service.
This may allow the user's personal information to be accumulated to a server of a telecommunication company, thereby causing privacy invasion issues. Also, in this type of advertisement service, the telecommunication company acquires an advertising authority and exercises all rights. This results in building entry barriers to and holding a monopoly on a mobile advertisement market.
If a self-employed person in a small store or a local market wants real-time changing advertisement messages to be freely transmitted only in a certain range from his/her location, the above-described type of service may give a significant burden to the self-employed person who is an advertiser.
This is, there are a monetary barrier where the advertiser should pay a certain amount of advertisement rate and fee and a technical psychological barrier where the advertiser, one of small business owners, is not familiar with a mobile wireless advertisement because only a large telecommunication company exclusively provides a service.